That said, it is looking like we are well placed to enter the new year with all the foundations in place to make measureable improvements to the information we offer. We have routes into customer projects via support call outcome codes (if it was an information related issue, I’m contacting the project to see how it arose and what we can do to fix it), stats on what areas of our knowledge centre are being accessed down to the topic level, via our recent upgrade of Author-it, which will allow us to target the areas of the documentation that are being most heavily used, and we will soon be launching a Q&A style forum within our developer community website, allowing a level of user-generated content to be available to all of our customers.

Personally I’ve started to get to grips with the ISTC website and hope to use some of the time available over the holidays to crack on with moving it to a CMS. There is some restructuring required as well and I’m hoping to start adding some new sections in the early part of the year, more on that nearer the time!

To everyone who has visited this blog, I wish you all the very best for the coming festive period, and in to the coming year!

Having been in my current job for just over 3.5 years, I thought it would be interesting to look back at where I started and ahead to where I want to be, and it was at that point I realised I have a problem (well, I have many, but I’m not discussing those here, thank you very much).

The thing is, I’m not entirely sure where I want to be in 5 years time, all I know is that I don’t want to be doing the same job I’m doing today. Which is lucky as, given the continuing impact the internet has on our profession and the software industry in general, and that my company is always willing to embrace new ideas, it’s entirely unlikely that I’ll be doing exactly what I’m doing today, even if I wanted to.

Which begs the question, what WILL I be doing?

I’m not entirely sure but looking at the way a number of discrete jobs are starting to come together, I’d imagine it would be some sort of merge of Technical Writer, Information Architecture, Content Curator, Community Manager and Social Media Advocate all bundled into one, an Information Advocate Content Curation and Interaction Specialist?? (Ugh, I hate job titles).

As we continue to explore and understand how people want to access information, as well as how we can streamline our own production processes, it’s looking more and more like the traditional technical writing role is on the way out. Admittedly that might be a long slow path of evolution, particularly for the heavily regulated industries, but more and more it seems that the expectation of customers is to have access to information online, rather than in printed form. This is not a new trend, and let’s be honest, we are not exactly quick at adopting new ways of working here in the UK, but it’s certainly where I’m looking when I consider my role in the future.

Case in point, in our hunt for a team wide task tracking application, after some searching and experimentation we plumped for a bastardisation of Remember The Milk. It’s not as ideal as we’d hoped but it ‘would do’.

And, this very morning, up pops a product that has been updated since I last saw it and it appears that it meets our needs perfectly (Producteev). However the decision on whether we use it will be deferred to the team.

That said, sometimes there isn’t time to consult on a decision and, most times, making the decision is the most important thing, even if it’s not the right one.

After all, the best way to learn is by your mistakes.

Looking back it’s been a good year for me, and I’m hoping to take a lot of things forward in the coming year. All of that will be covered here, of course, and I’ve got some plans to revisit some of the topics that I’ve shared with you this year.

Rather than write up a review I thought I’d just see what Wordle thought of my website, which is interesting in and of itself:

Thanks to everyone who has commented or emailed me direct. It has really helped me and I hope it’s helped some of you.

All the very best for the coming holiday season, and here’s to a wonderful 2010!

Which is a good a topic as any as, like many people in this industry, I certainly didn’t set out to be a Technical Writer, far from it.

For me Technical Writing combines two of my early interests, words and technology. Growing up I read a lot, and was lucky enough that my Dad used to bring a computer home at the weekend. BBC (Acorn) Micro, and later the first Mac Plus. I’ll happily admit to crafting documents (leaflets and the like) in every single available font on one page!

When it came time to leave school, Physics was my main interest area, and looking to add a technology slant I chose a course in Electronic and Electrical Engineering. In hindsight that was a mistake but it’s not something I regret. A few years later, with University behind me, I had converted my part-time job in McDonalds to a full-time job as I cast about for a ‘real’ job!

It was my Mum who spotted an advert in the local paper from a company looking to hire a “Technical Administrator”. The role was a mixed bag of tasks, largely supporting the small development team (all 12 of them) and after successfully negotiating a short writing test about how to use a flatbed scanner, I was soon put to work, writing documentation for their application. With little or no instruction or guidance I looked to those big clunky manuals that I had sitting on my desk, and it’s no small coincidence that the documentation I produced bore a striking similarity in style and layout to that of the Adobe FrameMaker 4.5 manual.

Towards the end of my time there, in 1995 if I recall correctly, I was sent on a two-day training course on how to create HTML pages with a view of setting up a company website. And so my journey on the internet began.

Having been made redundant I moved to England to Dr.Solomons where I gained a LOT of knowledge in a short space of time, working in a well organised, well run team. Some of the lessons learned there I now find myself echoing to my current team. A brief stint running the team also made me realise that I was capable of taking that step up.

The next role relied on my web expertise (a large part of my time at Dr.Solomons was focussed around web delivery of information) and also took me into another large company (was Tetra, now owned by Sage). A different working environment, and yet more to learn.

It was during those early years of my career that I realised that I’d fallen into a wonderful world where I could, if I so wished, dip my finger into a manner of different discussions and be involved with a large variety of people in different areas of a company. I’d speak with the QA engineers about issues with the product, talk to the Product Marketing team about how the product was being sold and who was buying it, the translation team were at the next set of desks and I’ve been lucky that most of the developers I’ve worked with have all been smart, friendly and helpful individuals. Even the grumpy ones.

My first step into team management was taken with some trepididation, but I’ve always trusted my own ability to learn quickly and with a little guidance (and one awful mistake) I think I’ve a good handle on how to get the best from a team of technical writers (for the most part, let them get on with it, they are more than capable without me!) and in the past couple of years I’ve learned a lot about selling our role to the company.

I’ve been lucky, both in the decisions made about my career (not all of which I’ve had a say in with two job changes brought about through redundancy) and especially in terms of the people I’ve worked with. I’ve learned so much from my colleagues, mentors and managers that I do sometimes wonder quite how I got where I am today.

And that’s why I’m happy to say that I’m a Technical Writer*, that I work in the field of Technical Communications and I don’t see either of those things changing any time soon.

* not that I do a lot of writing these days, my official title is Technical Information Manager, read into that what you will